Cultivating a Past: Essays on the History of Hadley, Massachusetts

9. “We owe something more than prayers”: Elizabeth Porter Phelps’s Gift of Church Silver and Her Quest for Christian Fellowship

9 As Laurel Ulrich’s and Lynne Bassett’s essays demonstrate, women thought carefully about the material objects that surrounded them, and made decisions about their appearance that were deeply grounded in community values. Karen Parsons affirms the conscious way women acquired and made use of goods in a study of gentlewoman Elizabeth Porter Phelps’s early nineteenth-century gift of silver to Hadley’s First Congregational Church. Eschewing easy analyses that see such gifts merely as gestures to display wealth and privilege, Parsons explores the ways in which donated objects could communicate genuine commitments to spiritual concerns and communities. She, like Ulrich, also reminds us how women used objects to reach beyond the confines of their own lives; whether bequeathed to loved ones or given to congregations, objects allowed women to extend their influence over generations. “We owe something more than prayers” Elizabeth Porter Phelps’s Gift of Church Silver and Her Quest for Christian Fellowship Karen Parsons May we ever remember that we owe something more than prayers even on offering to the Lord that they who preach the Gospel shall be supported. Elizabeth Porter Phelps to Elizabeth Phelps Huntington , August 21, 1811 Sometime in the years between 1811 and 1813, Elizabeth Porter Phelps, a wealthy Hadley townswoman, donated two communion vessels to the congregation at the Church of Christ (figure 9.1). Such gifts of silver, especially when inscribed with the donor’s name, expressed something about the giver to the community. One convention of material culture criticism ascribes the 211 gesture primarily to the desire to demonstrate status. Since Phelps belonged to a prominent, moneyed Massachusetts family, it would be easy to see these cups as nothing other than a display of class identity. A careful examination of the context in which Phelps made the gift, however, reveals the complexity of the role that church silver played in early nineteenth-century New England life. In this broader view, it becomes evident that the gift brought together the social networks in which Phelps traveled as a wealthy woman with her intense dedication to her religious principles and community. The meaning of the communion vessels in particular is revealed in this context, since the Hadley congregation advocated a very open and inclusive communion ritual. Furthermore, the time at which Phelps gave the cups coincided with a membership crisis in the church in the years following the death of their beloved pastor, the Reverend Samuel Hopkins. Taken at face value, Phelps’s gift can be read as an expression of status simply by virtue of her family wealth and the high profile she maintained in her church. The family’s wealth was certainly no secret to those who worshipped at the Church of Christ. Elizabeth’s husband, Charles, owned six hundred acres, making him the largest landowner in town; in 1799 he paid almost twice as much land tax as the next largest property owner.1 The Phelpses employed church members and local residents as farm workers, domestic servants, and skilled craftspeople at Forty Acres (figure 9.2).2 The couple’s activities within their 212 Karen Parsons Figure 9.1. Thomas C. Fletcher (1787–1866) and Sidney Gardiner (1791–1869), two-handled communion cups, Boston, 1808–1813. Courtesy of the First Congregational Church of Hadley. church also demonstrated, intentionally or not, their financial well-being. Charles, who served as a deacon and played an important role in the 1807–8 construction of the third meetinghouse, sold pews in this new meetinghouse to church members.3 He also owned three pews: numbers 26 and 28, each valued at $200, and number 70—which he probably rented out—valued at $24 in 1817.4 Befitting their financial position, the Phelpses communicated a taste for decor that was fashionable, genteel, and urban: while the surrounding area supplied their household labor, by 1800 the Phelpses looked often to Boston, not to Hadley, to furnish their home.5 Not insignificantly, the cups themselves were of Boston manufacture, making it all the more likely that Elizabeth’s fellow churchgoers would have associated the cups with her social station. Each of the two five-inch-tall cups bears a footed base and two strap handles projecting more than an inch and a half from its body, and an inscription that reads, “Presented / by Elizabeth Phelps to the / Church of Christ in Hadley. / Feby. 1813.” On the underside...